A new study finds that Spanish-speaking preschoolers are better adjusted in
class when their teachers speak at least some Spanish, compared to children
whose teachers speak only English.

The key finding of the study, by the Frank Porter Graham Child
Development Institute at UNC Chapel Hill, tends of refute conventional
wisdom that English-only pre-kindergarten programs help close achievement
gaps among children from different racial, ethnic and socioeconomic groups.

“Many early childhood programs are moving toward a system that may
isolate children who are learning English, leaving them at risk for social
and language problems,” Gisele Crawford, a research associate at the
institute and an author of the study, to appear in the April issue of Early
Education and Development.

“Programs that have the potential to mitigate the achievement gap between
children from different racial, ethnic and socioeconomic groups may be doing
just the opposite,” Crawford said. “This study suggests that, too often,
inequities already are present in early educational experiences between
non-English speaking and English-speaking children.”

Compared to English-only teachers, researchers found that teachers who
included Spanish said their Spanish-speaking students experienced less
aggression, bullying and teasing by their classmates, and they rated them
higher in social skills. Spanish-speaking teachers also spoke more often
with the children and had better teacher-student relationships.

Teachers used Spanish with Spanish-speaking children less than 20 percent
of the time. And almost a quarter of Spanish-speaking children had teachers
who never spoke a word of Spanish in the classroom.

When speaking directly to Spanish-speaking students, teachers who did
include Spanish still used English two-thirds of the time. Yet when teachers
spoke Spanish, they had more elaborate conversations with the children.
Neither the amount of Spanish nor English spoken by teachers affected the
children’s English proficiency.

The amount of Spanish that teachers spoke with children also was also
significantly related to teachers’ ratings of children’s frustration
tolerance, assertiveness, task orientation and peer social skills – the
higher the proportion of English interactions, the more likely that teachers
said children had conduct and learning problems and a low tolerance for
frustration.

“Given the increasing number of foreign-born preschoolers, it is critical
to address the claims made by the ‘English-only’ movement, particularly as
they fuel public policy decisions,” said Florence Chang, lead author of the
study. “An English-is-best approach largely ignores the complexities and
stressors of children’s transitions into early childhood and school.”